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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27251323">In Close Quarters</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cygfa/pseuds/Cygfa'>Cygfa</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>3x02, M/M, Missing Scenes, do not copy to another site</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:21:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,972</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27251323</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cygfa/pseuds/Cygfa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This is my attempt to fill in some blanks left in 3x02.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>61</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In Close Quarters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Slight/implied spoilers for 3x02 so maybe only read after having seen the episode.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Bobcat?” He can hear the incredulousness in his own voice, and how it barely hides his worry.<br/>
“I don’t know, I’m on drugs.” Reno gives him a wry smirk and smiles and he huffs. Then, his eyes flit to Paul on the screen of her PADD again. If he were prone to telling himself lies and not a trained Starfleet doctor with some experience in handling massive trauma, he would tell himself that it was just the camera and the lights in the Jeffries Tube that made Paul look so pale. But he was neither of these things and the brief moment of relief he had allowed herself when Paul had managed to finish the repairs had passed.<br/>
“Paul? Paul! Talk to me. How are you doing.”<br/>
“I’m…..” Paul gestures vaguely with his right arm, the one he was not leaning on, but he did not finish the sentence, instead screwing up his face in what was clearly a mixture of pain and exhaustion.<br/>
“I need the emergency med kit stored behind panel 6-B,” he says, directed at no one in particular, but he sees one of the engineers move out of the corner of his eyes.<br/>
“Paul, I need you to listen to me.” His partner nods, but doesn’t say anything in reply. A sure sign that he isn’t as well as he had been pretending to be. “Are you still bleeding? Can you tell?”<br/>
“I…,” Paul shifts around a bit revealing blood on his uniform and the floor beneath him. He reaches down and his fingers  come up stained bright red. “I think so…yes….” His voice sounds small and apologetic and if he wasn’t sick with worry, a worry tinged with some annoyance at his partner’s tendency to risk his own health to help his crew, he may have found it touching, maybe endearing even. Hugh's brain and his heart are racing. He has to get Paul out of the Tube, but making him crawl out of it is too dangerous…he is not going to risk that. Is not going to risk more renewed coming to Paul. Not now. Not after he had just found his way back to him.<br/>
“Docotr Culber?” The engineer momentarily pulls him out of his thoughts. He is holding the med kit towards Hugh and he grabs it, nodding a swift thanks.<br/>
“Paul, stay where you are, I’m coming to you. I’ll talk you through some emergency measures and then we’ll see about beaming you out of there.” He is amazed at how sure his voice sounds. “Jett, you’ll need to talk me through the route to him.” He half expects a sarcastic remark from her, something like “He left a trail for you, just follow it,” but instead she nods, her lips pressed together in grim concentration. He slings the kit across his shoulder and begins climbing the ladder, taking two rungs at a time.</p><p>His head races back to his days in the Academy when they had practiced evacuating injured crewmembers from Jeffries Tubes.<br/>
‘Though a barely healed incision after a gaping chest wound was not one of the scenarios they had gone over, he thinks, letting out a huff. ‘That impossible man.’<br/>
“Okay, Doc,” Reno’s voice bounces off the walls of the tube slightly, creating a faint echo. “you need to turn right up ahead. Then you should already see him.”<br/>
He quickens his pace as much as possible on all fours and with the med kit bouncing against his chest.<br/>
“Hugh?”<br/>
He can hear Paul and then he turns the corner and can see him, too, craning his neck to try and see him.<br/>
“Stay still,” his voice sounds sharper than he had wanted it to. But it helps. Paull stills. “I’m right here, Paul. We’ll get you out of here.” These next words are softer and he can hear some of his doctorly façade break, his worry for Paul, carefully contained for most of the day – days? How long ago had their fight against Control started? – creeping up on him now. He wonders if Paul noticed. He hopes not. There was no use in worrying him, too.<br/>
“Hugh…”<br/>
Though by the sound of it, Paul has realized he is in a bad shape.<br/>
“Shhh…. It’s okay. He has made it as close as iss possible without lying on top of Paul or squeezing in next to him and robbing himself of the ability to move in the way he'd need to. So instead, he puts his hand on Paul’s lower leg and squeezes slightly. “I’m here. I’ll give you my tricorder in a moment. I’ll need you to pass it along your torso so I can take a look at the readings. See….how bad things are.”<br/>
“Mhm,” he cocanuld see Paul nod, and then a pale hand stretches back towards him, reaching for the instrument.<br/>
Hugh slips the strap of the medkit over his head and pulls out the tricorder, flicking it on and to the correct setting.<br/>
“Here.” Their fingers briefly touch. Paul’s are slightly clammy, but that might also be an aftereffect of the adrenaline rush from trying to fix the relay.<br/>
“You know, if you wanted to get to me in close quarters, you could have invited me over for dinner first.”<br/>
He hears Paul’s huff of laughter, but he can also see the way his shoulders tense up, knows in that second, as he presses the tricorder into Paul’s outstretched hand, his fingers lingering for a moment, that the joke had slightly missed its mark. Had come to close to another, barely healed wound.<br/>
“Once….once I’m out of sickbay, I’ll invite you over.” Paul’s voice sounds strained and Hugh worriedly glances from him and his somewhat sluggish movements to the emergency kit’s PADD, waiting for the readings. But still, he appreciates the rejoinder, a clear signal that Paul is not as badly off as he could have been. Physically or emotionally.<br/>
“Is that you trying to bribe me into letting you out of sickbay early?” This comes almost easy and gets a slightly louder laugh. One that is followed by a hiss of pain.<br/>
“I had to try.”<br/>
Despite himself and his worries, Hugh smiles, shaking his head a little. Then, his attention is taken over by the readings and he bites his lips to suppress a curse.<br/>
“How…bad is it?”<br/>
“Nothing we can’t fix. But not here.” He pulls an emergency regen unit out of the kit and then reaches for the tricorder Paul is holding out for him again. Is he imagining this, or does Paul’s breathing sound more pained?<br/>
“This is an emergency unit. It works best when there’s no fabric in the way, but it’ll also work through your t-shirt. I’ll need you to open your jacket – slowly – and then pass it over your scar until I tell you to stop. That should help stop the bleeding. For now. Then we can transport you out.”<br/>
“Mhm,” Paul’s voice sounds strained and his hand was shaking a little as he took the unit. Did he hear a gasp of pain or was that just the sound of the zipper being pulled down bouncing off the walls in a funny way? He hears the characteristic hum of the unit and while he can’t quite relax yet, it still loosens the knot in his stomach a little. This should at least stop the blood loss for a little while.</p><p><br/>
*</p><p>“And this time, you’re staying in for at least three cycles.” He jabs at the buttons of the regen unit with a little more force than necessary. He’s not angry at Paul, or not very, but the exhaustion of the last however many hours he’s been on duty, treating emergency after emergency, including his own partner, *twice*, are taking their toll.<br/>
“Hugh?”<br/>
“Hmm? Are you okay? Comfortable?” He reaches out to brush a stray lock of Paul’s hair out of his eyes, letting his hand linger against the familiar curve of his head for a moment.<br/>
“No….I’m, well, not okay, but.” Paul raises his eyebrows a little, but Hugh can see the twitch in his arm as he stops himself from gesturing. “No. You….you should…have a shower. Change. You’re still in the same uniform.”<br/>
Withdrawing his hand from Paul, Hugh looks down at himself. At the bloodstains standing out starkly against the white fabric of his jacket. ‘How much of that is Paul’s? How much is from other people?’ He pushes the thought away, shakes his head slightly.<br/>
“And risk you running off again?” He’s only partly teasing. He can tell Paul is ready to stay put this time.<br/>
“I’ll stay. I promise.” Paul actually looks chagrined and Hugh wishes he could reach for his hand. But the structure of the unit makes that all but impossible.<br/>
“Okay. A shower and new clothes really can’t hurt.” It’s amazing how much more he is suddenly feeling his own fatigue, now that he is seriously contemplating a shower. “But I’ll come and check on you in about 30 minutes, Commander.”<br/>
Paul’s eyebrows rise again, but this time, there’s a bemused expression on his face. So he heard the way Hugh said his rank. With that slightly teasing tone he’d sometimes used when they were alone in their quarters….before.<br/>
“Okay.”<br/>
He’s waiting for the turbolift after letting Tracy now where he was going, and all but being shooed out of a now much calmer sickbay, when he realizes that the “dear doctor” had been missing from Paul’s reply. There’s a sharp pain in his chest and for a moment he feels like he’s running out of air. He mechanically gets onto the turbolift when it arrives a second later, nodding to the two engineers inside and telling the computer his destination as if on autopilot.<br/>
He had slipped into their old mode of banter almost effortlessly under the pressure of the situation. And Paul had, too. Actually trying to spell that stupid sentence about the t-shirt. He shook his head to himself, not caring what the other two occupants of the lift might think. But of course….there had been that moment in the Jeffries Tubes. And the missing endearment. They weren’t back to normal yet. They might not be for a while. But they had a beginning. One they’d need to follow up with long talks and getting used to each other again. Hugh knew that. But he had still let himself be lulled into a sense of familiar safety by their interactions today.<br/>
‘One day at a time, Doctor Culber,’ he told himself firmly as the turbolift came to a halt on his deck.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p>It was actually more twenty-five than thirty minutes when Hugh reappeared, wearing dark, almost black slacks and a soft grey sweater. One of his favorites, a part of Paul’s brain supplies.<br/>
“Hey,” he tires for a smile but it is almost immediately broken by a yawn.<br/>
“That’s probably the neuroblocker.”<br/>
“Hmmmm….so you’re off shift now?”<br/>
“Yes. Everyone except for a few of us has been ordered off-duty.”<br/>
Paul can see the miniscule shift in Hugh’s stance, the way he glances at the readings on the regen unit’s display.<br/>
“It’s still the second cycle,” he say, suppressing another yawn. “So why are you here? Making sure I don’t run off again?” He wiggles his eyebrows and is glad when Hugh chuckle’s slightly and shakes his head. He’s not quite sure because of the hum of the machine, but he thinks he hears a whispered “Impossible” pass Hugh’s lips.<br/>
“No. I thought I could…walk you home when this is done.”<br/>
Paul feels warmth spread through his chest and from there up into his cheeks. Warmth that has nothing to do with the working of the medical equipment he’s stuffed into.<br/>
“I….I’d like that.”</p>
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